Attribution Modeling

The Chatbot Closed the Sale. The Publisher Created the Demand. That's a Problem.
April 13, 2026 at 9:53 am

Criteo bought its way into ChatGPT. Advertisers can now place sponsored products inside artificial intelligence responses, the same way they buy display inventory across the open web. It's a logical move. It's also the clearest signal yet that the ad industry is about to repeat its worst mistake at scale. Picture this scenario: a user…

What Amazon’s Big-Box Move Means for Retail Media and Brands
February 23, 2026 at 10:02 am

While Amazon.com entering the big-box format with its largest-ever store will be framed as a push to compete with Walmart and Costco and win more physical baskets, the real story is more focused on attribution and retail media. This is more than an expansion of where Amazon sells products. Rather, it’s expanding where it can…

The Attribution Illusion: Why Old Metrics Are Failing Retail Brands
October 28, 2025 at 10:19 am

For decades, marketers have operated under a kind of mass delusion: we’ve clung to vanity metrics — e.g., impressions, clicks, and platform-reported conversions — not because they told the whole story, but because they were easy to measure and convenient to believe. These metrics, lobbied by major tech platforms, gave us a reassuring sense of…

21st Century Branding: Is it a Hoax?
January 19, 2018 at 9:13 am

I smirk when anyone tells me that "branding" is the core of any campaign. Branding is to measurement what superstition is to science. You advertise to do one thing: move product — period. That product is sold either online or offline. Online measurement, while not perfect, is evolving. Offline, up until recently, not so much.…